CURIOSITY HUNTING.


What will people not collect in this curious age, and what prices will
they not pay for things apparently valueless? Few objects can seem less
desirable than an old postage-stamp, yet our Paris correspondent informs
us that postage-stamps are at a premium in the capital of taste and of
pleasure. A well-known dealer offers 4 pounds 15_s_. for every Tuscan
stamp earlier than 1860, and 16 pounds for particularly fine examples.
Mauritius stamps of 1847 are estimated--by the purchaser, mind--at two
thousand francs, and post-marks of British Guiana of 1836, from five
hundred to a thousand francs. Eighty pounds for a soiled bit of paper,
that has no beauty to recommend it! Probably no drawing of equal size
from the very hand of Raffaelle or Leonardo would be priced nearly so
high as these grubby old stamps. Yet the drawing would be not only a
thing of art, beautiful in itself, but also a personal relic of the
famous artist whose pencil touched it, while a stamp is a relic of
nothing but some forgotten postal arrangement with a colony. We do not
know, moreover, how much the dealer will ask for these stamps when once
he gets hold of them and has rich collectors at his mercy. In no trade
do the buyer's price and the seller's price differ with such wide margins
as in the commerce of curiosities, especially, perhaps, in the
book-trade. People find that they possess books highly priced in
dealers' catalogues, and, if they want money, they carry their treasures
to the dealers. But "advantage seldom comes of it." The dealer has a
different price, very often, when he is a purchaser. This is
intelligible, but, to many persons who are not amateurs, the mania for
rare postage-stamps passes all understanding. Yet it is capable of being